Ferrari's lack of form "painful for all of us", says Raikkonen

The Scuderia once again was clearly third in the pecking order at Hockenheim, as Sebastian Vettel and Raikkonen came home a distant fifth and sixth, well behind both Mercedes and Red Bull drivers.

It means Red Bull has moved 14 points clear of Ferrari for second place in the constructors' standings heading into the summer break, having got at least one of its driver on the podium in the last four races.

While Vettel said the Maranello squad knows what it has to do to recover, Raikkonen, whose last podium appearance came in Austria, struck a more downbeat tone - saying that the situation was difficult for the team to take.

"We just weren't fast enough," said the Finn. "It's as simple as that, unfortunately.

"Hopefully we'll find some tools hopefully to challenge both of them [Red Bull and Mercedes] later on. It's not going to be easy.

"Everyone can see where we finished, and it's obviously painful for all of us. But this is how it is right now, and we just have to work hard and improve."

Asked if he was more optimistic about Spa, a track where he has taken four victories, Raikkonen added: "Not really. I mean, it's a completely different layout than here, so it might be different.

"But for sure we have work to be done to get where we want to be. We'll see where we stand, but we need to improve."

Tyres not full picture

Raikkonen explained that, while he suffered more tyre degradation that he had been expecting, this was not the main cause for Ferrari's lack of competitiveness in Germany.

"Probably I was expecting the tyres to last a bit better, so it made a bit tricky," he admitted. "It wasn't too bad when we had the first [set of] tyres, but they dropped off quite quickly.

"We need more downforce to go faster, and this will make a difference with tyre life. But here it looks like we were just lacking overall speed.

"There are moments where we can be very fast in a race but it doesn't last long enough."